Gym Owner Wealth-Building Strategies
The best business and financial advice depends on where you are today—focus on the right priority at the right stage to build long-term success.
Many gym owners will not be able to retire comfortably.
And maybe not at all.
But it doesn’t need to be that way.
While I’m not a financial advisor…
(and btw, none of what I write below should be construed as advice, thank you lawyers)
As a business owner, you have the ability to write your own ticket. You can, in theory, make as much income as you want.
But if you want to build wealth, we need to save and invest some of your cash flow.
Here are some non-controversial action steps:
THE BASICS OF GYM OWNER WEALTH BUILDING
- Don’t spend all your money (duh). Don’t ramp up your spending and lifestyle as income increases.
- “Pay yourself first”: set up automatic deductions that transfer money into investment accounts before you can spend it.
- Leverage the tax-advantaged retirement accounts in your country to reduce your tax burden.
- Buy low-cost index funds.
- Keep it simple. Let it rip. Repeat for 20-40 years.
If you do this long enough, compounding interest takes care of most of the work.
That’s why the most important success factor is:
Save and invest as much as you can, as early as you can.
This is solid advice, as far as it goes.
But what it overlooks is your current financial situation.
I recently read a book called The Wealth Ladder by Nick Maggiulli. Having read a ton of finance books, this one has a novel distinction others miss:
At each order of magnitude of wealth accumulation, the strategies have to change.
If your net worth is $2k and you’re only making $30k per year with a family, “cutting out lattes” isn’t going to do the trick. Nor will you realistically have much to invest. You have to figure out how to make more money.
At the same time, once you’re north of $10m… probably doesn’t matter how many lattes you have. The principles will still be in play. But it’s a waste of time to obsess over $5 decisions when you’re whiffing on $50,000 — or $500,000 — decisions.
HOW THE WEALTH LADDER RELATES TO GYMS
There’s a similar phenomenon that plays out with gym owners.
When I create content, I have to stick to generalities. Because I’m talking in a vacuum to a mixed audience.
But the right advice taken at the wrong time won’t get good results.
If you’re getting two leads per week and can’t pay rent, I don’t want to talk about your team’s quarterly continuing education curriculum. You need to fix your marketing.
At the same time, if you keep doubling down on your sales skills, but you lose 10% of your clients every month, we should look at what’s going wrong with your service delivery.
Or maybe you’re a world class trainer, a productive beast, AND a marketing wiz. But you can’t get anyone to stay on your team. So everything is always falling on you. And you can never take a day off and have to work 60 hours a week just to prevent the wheels from falling off.
If that’s the case, we need to uncover WHY you “can’t find good help.” We need to audit your leadership skills, run a 360 feedback process, and look at your systems for team development.
(Btw, they’re not the “help.” So… maybe that’s where we start when trying to improve your situation.)
Just like with finance,
We want to solve the right thing. At the right time. In the right order.
Otherwise great advice well-executed will lead to poor results.
Let’s win the short term game AND the long term game,
PS: Want an outside eye to help you figure out your MINA (Most Important Next Action)?
This is the best way to make sure you’re taking the right next action that will move the ball forward for your specific situation.
Instead of grinding your wheels, following scattershot podcast advice. 😉
Book a 30-minute intro call HERE.